“Ana,” Rawne whispered. The taint has got us. The poison of this fething world. You and me both. If we leave Cirk, we let it win.”
Curth stared at him. “That’s rubbish!” she said.
“No, it isn’t. Whatever you or I think she is, she’s got this far. This is our last chance, Ana. Our last chance!”
“Our last chance for what?”
“To prove we’re still human. To prove we’re loyal servants of the Emperor. Even now. Even though Gereon has done its worst.”
Curth lowered the rifle and gazed at him. Tears welled up in her eyes. “You talk a lot of feth, you know that, major?”
“You know I’m right,” Rawne replied. “I won’t let this place beat me. How about you?”
“Do the right thing?” she asked sarcastically.
“Because the Emperor protects. And if he approves, he will protect us and let us know he is pleased with our service.”
“You make that shit up all by yourself?” she said.
“No. It was something Gaunt said.”
“All right,” said Curth. Rawne handed her his last fresh clip and she slammed it home.
“For the Emperor, then,” she said. He shook his head. “No, for Tanith, first and only.” They got up, lasrifles blasting, and charged down the corridor side by side into the enemy fire.
The two Sons of Sek had shoved Sturm into another apartment chamber. He was terribly agitated now, pacing up and down, the lexigrapher hobbling after him.
“Gaunt… no, that’s not right. As I said, he can’t be here. It makes no sense…”
Sturm paused. He glanced at Humiliti, who was still typing, and then walked through into the apartment’s bedchamber, throwing the doors wide.
“I remember,” he said, sitting down on the bed. I remember now. Throne, I thought I’d remembered everything. Who I was, what I was. But there are deep, dark places in the mind that take a long time to resurface.”
Humiliti tapped and rattled his keys.
“I was a commander of men… did I say that before?”
The lexigrapher nodded.
“Men feared me. Respected me. But… oh, Emperor, I remember it now. Vervunhive. The bloody war. We were losing. The Zoican host was right at the gates.”
Sturm got to his feet and hunched down facing the lexigrapher. Humiliti looked up at him with bright eyes, his nimble fingers poised over the key-levers.
“I was afraid,” Sturm said. “I was afraid for my life. I ran. I deserted my post. I would have left them all to die.”
Humiliti hesitated, wondering if he was supposed to record this.
“Take it down, you maggot!” Sturm cried, rising again. Take it all down! This is my confession! This is me! You and your foul masters wanted to know all about me! All my secrets! You wanted to pick my mind clean! Well, how about this one, eh? I thought I was a lord general. I thought I had power and strength. So did your masters. That’s why they spent all this time and effort breaking me. And what do they get? What do they get, you little runt?”
Sturm turned and bowed his head. “A coward. A man too afraid of death to do the right thing.”
Beyond the outer room of the apartment, shots rang out.
Mkoll and Criid pulled Varl and Brostin to their feet. Both men had blisters on their skin from the sucking fireball. Behind them, the entire staircase was ablaze. There were ominous rumbles as the structure of the bastion itself began to crumble.
“Nice one,” Criid grinned.
“Time to leave,” Mkoll said.
“Where’s the wound?” Curth was yelling. “Where are you hit?”
Cirk showed Curth her left forearm. A round had broken the bones and exploded the imago in its pus-filled blister.
“It’s gone,” Cirk sighed.
“Come on,” Curth said urgently, helping her up. Rawne was behind her, raking las-fire into the doorway of the staircase, pushing the enemy back. Every muzzle flash seemed to form the stigma mark to him, but he didn’t care any more.
“You came back for me,” Cirk whispered.
“Yeah, we did,” said Curth. “How about that?”
The two Sons of Sek turned and began to return fire, but Gaunt and Mkvenner had the drop on them. Gaunt stormed forward, a bolt pistol in either hand, firing at the frantic warriors. One toppled as his skull exploded. The other jerked back, a bolt round striking his right arm and disintegrating it. The soldier screamed and Mkvenner put a bullet through his open mouth.
Gaunt and Mkvenner prowled forward, their weapons smoking. The door that the Sons had been defending was wide open. Gaunt holstered his pistols, and drew his power sword. It throbbed as the blade ignited.
The chamber beyond was an anteroom, full of opulent furniture. An empty gilt frame hung on the wall, surrounding a blasphemous symbol. There was a doorway beyond, open. Gaunt could hear a voice talking.
He glanced at Mkvenner. Ven raised his autorifle. They crept forward.
And Desolane entered the room behind them.
TWENTY-NINE
The life-ward pounced forward, its twin ketra blades scything at the two Guardsmen. Mkvenner reacted first, turning to block, his raised autorifle splintering apart beneath the life-ward’s right-hand blade.
Gaunt turned too, bringing the power sword up. It met the left-hand ketra, and the blade glanced away.
He had never seen anything like this creature. A towering, slender, sexless body sheathed in a tight suit of blue-black metal-weave and draped with a gauzy black cloak that moved like smoke. The monster’s long legs were jointed the wrong way below the knees and ended in cloven hooves. A smooth bronze helmet covered the thing’s head, broken only by four holes: two for the eye-slits and two on the brow through which small white horns extended.
It moved like water, as if the rest of existence had been slowed down.
Gaunt blocked another stab, and another, then danced around to present again. The thing lunged forward, ripping Gaunt’s coat with the tip of its left-hand blade, and then swung in a strike that left a long, lacerating stripe down Gaunt’s torso.
Gasping in pain, weeping blood, Gaunt leapt back and swung the power sword of Heironymo Sondar around in a savage chop. The powered blade met Desolane’s left-hand knife and shattered it.
Desolane lunged again, and stripped a deep gash through Gaunt’s right arm with its remaining knife. The sheer impact threw Gaunt over onto the floor. His hands wet with blood, he scrambled for the sword. Desolane knocked it away with one cloven hoof, and then kicked Gaunt hard in the belly. Gaunt doubled up, choking and winded.
Desolane stabbed its remaining blade towards Gaunt’s head.
Silenced pistol rounds, spitting like whispers, jerked the life-ward backwards. Mkvenner rose, tossing aside the now-empty autopistol, and picked up the fallen power sword. It hummed and sang in his hands as he crossed and turned it.
Desolane went for him.
Mkvenner parried the first cut, swung wide, deflected the second and wheeled back to stop the third. Desolane snarled, swinging round to attack Mkvenner again. The life-ward scythed in low, and Mkvenner managed to turn the ketra blade away, but Desolane slammed its bodyweight into the Tanith scout, and sent him reeling back. Desolane checked and spun again, fending off the sword and splitting Mkvenner’s cheek open from the lip to the jaw-line.
Mkvenner fell, blood pouring out of his face.
Desolane turned nimbly and stepped over to Gaunt, who was still trying to rise. The life-ward raised its ketra blade double-handed to deliver the killing stroke.
An iron quarrel hit Desolane in the ribs. As the life-ward staggered back, another went in through one of the eye slits in its bronze helmet.
Eszrah ap Niht walked forward, reloading his reynbow. The partisan fired again, and planted an iron arrow in Desolane’s chest. The life-ward staggered forward and smashed Eszrah across the room with one blow of its fist The partisan lay where he fell, his segmented cloak in tatters. Desolane stumbled round, swaying. By now,
the moth-toxin was flooding through its veins. It fell down hard on its face.
Gaunt got to his feet, dripping blood. He limped through the doorway into the bedchamber, drawing a bolt pistol in each hand.
The hunched lexigrapher backed away.
Sturm sat on the end of the bed, staring at the floor.
“Commissar,” he said, without looking up.
“Lord general,” Gaunt replied.
“I’m glad it’s you,” said Sturm. “Somehow appropriate.”
“In the name of the God-Emperor—” Gaunt began.
“Please, no. Nothing so formal,” Sturm protested. “I remember it all now, Gaunt. All of it. The fear. The… cowardice. It’s not a pretty memory. Throne knows, it took long enough to come back.”
Gaunt raised one of his pistols. “By the power of the Commisariate, I hereby declare—”
“Ibram? Ibram… please,” Sturm begged.
“Not this time, Sturm.”
“Please, in the name of the Throne! Give me a weapon!”
Gaunt stiffened, feeling the blood leaking out of him.
“I showed you that respect at Vervunhive. You turned it into an attack.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I beg you. Gaunt, you have two bolters, for Throne’s sake.”
Swaying, Gaunt held out one of his bolt pistols and gave it butt-first to Sturm. He kept the other one raised to cover the traitor general.
“Final request granted. Or… another trick?” Gaunt asked.
Sturm shook his head.
“Final request accepted,” Sturm said. He put the barrel of the bolt pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.
Gaunt took a step forward, not yet believing it was over. Sturm lay at his feet, his skull exploded like a ripe melon.
Desolane burst into the bedchamber, swinging the ketra blade like a sickle. The life-ward howled when it saw the pheguth’s corpse.
Gaunt flinched back.
A hotshot round disintegrated Desolane’s midriff and threw the life-ward’s corpse against the far wall.
Gaunt looked up. Feygor, his face streaming with blood, lowered Larkin’s long-las.
Gaunt smiled at Feygor. “You know,” he said. “I knew there was a reason I brought you along.”
THIRTY
Behind them, against the early dawn, the bastion was burning. The fleeing Ghosts had regrouped in a dim valley below the fortress. Every single one of them was wounded. But every single one was also alive.
Curth was trying to dress Gaunt’s wounds.
“See to the others, Ana. The more deserving,” he said.
“That would be you,” she replied.
Gaunt sent her away and limped down through the figures of the Ghosts sprawled amongst the rocks.
Larkin was moaning and seemed close to death. Feygor was now unconscious from blood loss.
Gaunt crouched down beside Beltayn.
“I’m so sorry, sir,” Beltayn said.
“For what?” asked Gaunt.
“My voxcaster, sir. I got it shot up. Now we can’t call in the extraction.”
“Bel, we’ll be fine. Nothing’s awry.”
Gaunt rose, and walked on. Curth was excising the last shreds of the burst imago from Cirk’s broken forearm. He watched for a moment as the steel pliers dragged black tendrils from the woman’s flesh.
Under the skin. What matters is on the inside. In the heart. In the mind. The Saint used many instruments to guide those loyal to her, even some that appeared to bear the mark of Chaos.
Gaunt turned away. He wondered how he would tell them.
It had been the last thing Van Voytz had said to him before the mission. The one thing Gaunt had not shared with the chosen team.
“Ibram, please understand there’s very little chance of getting you off Gereon again. You can transmit a call, of course, but the odds are you’ll be left stranded. Getting you in will be hard enough. Getting a ship close enough to pull you back out…” Van Voytz had looked away.
“Are you saying, sir, that if we’re still alive at the end of this suicidal mission, it’s still a one-way mission?”
“Yes, Gaunt,” Van Voytz had said. “Does that change your mind?”
“No, sir.”
Gaunt wandered down the slope to find Landerson.
“They fought and died with honour,” Gaunt said to him. “The Gereon cells. They almost had the bastards on the ropes. The resistance did its very best.”
“Yes, sir, it did,” Landerson replied. “But it wasn’t enough, was it? And now they’re all gone.”
Gaunt shrugged. “Then we’ll build the underground back up between us.”
“Between us?” Landerson asked.
Gaunt nodded. “I think I’m going to be here for a while longer. What do you say?”
“That Gereon resists?”
“Gereon resists,” Gaunt replied. He looked up. From the back of his mind came a memory, strong and unbidden. Tanith pipes. Brin Milo, playing the tune he always played when the Tanith First retired from a battlefield. He tried to remember its name.
The mountain wind rose, cold and unforgiving. It blew the smoke from the fortress out across the heartland, another stain upon a wide, disfigured world.
Scanning, formatting and basic
proofing by Undead.
Dan Abnett, [Gaunt's Ghosts 08] - Traitor General
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